Post your suggestions for new mod suppport features to be added. I'll update the list as new suggestions come in.

1. Races - Changes to the races.txt file

1a. Ability to set a race's homeworld to ALWAYS be it's starting homeworld. Playing as Klingons who don't live on Quo'nos or the Galactic Empire that doesn't live on Coruscant, is a problem. However, multiple factions of the same race does present a problem. Perhaps the largest faction, will get the homeworld. Or there could be a checkbox on the player, and galactic empire selection screens for 'Start on Homeworld'. - Igard

1b. Moddable families. Race family should also be modifiable (ie I can create feline race family if I so desire.

1c. Additional race stats. These might include:-

- Expansionism: Ability to set the rate at which each race expands their empire.

- Offence: The species offensive strength. Affects the species ground troop strength as well as ship design (high offence means ships get more guns, higher speed, less shields).

- Toughness: Ground troop modifier. Tougher they are, the higher their firepower. This is very important, as currently we can only adjust troop strength by changing aggression and intelligence. This makes sense in human terms, but an alien race could have many different characteristics which would enhance it's fighting ability.

- Subtleness: bonus modifier for spies and diplomacy.

- Xenophobia: Modifies diplomacy, also higher Xenophobia increases the chances that the species will start wars, or be willing to bombard planets. (This would be a good stat for Boskara or Sluken for example).

Addendum: Tax rates still affect happiness and growth. This will NOT bypass those modifiers.

1d. Options for multiracial colonization/conquering.

i) Quarantine: The Aliens are allowed to live on their home planet, but may not leave it and may not intermingle with other races of the empire. You gain their bonuses only for that planet, and only at 25% of normal. Can colonize new planets.

ii) Transmutation: This would occur when a race requires another species to procreate thier own. An example of this could be the Borg from Star Trek or the Cybermen from Dr Who, but also for lifeforms who require a host body for their embryos, such as the xenomorphs from the Alien films. The effect would be that most of the present population would begin to 'turn' into that of the attacking/colonizing species.

iii) Parasitic-- A racial trait which a race eats other organic races to grow stronger and reproduce.

1e. Negative values for race stats. This would allow us to reduce a race's resource extraction, ship and troop maintenance etc. - Nedrear

1f. A different image format for Race Flags. wmf files are a pain to work with and it would be nice to add more colour to our flags.

1g. Pre-space/Pre-industrial civilizations. Ability to check/designate a race that can NEVER form its own independant colonies or be a starting colony race. This would represent a pre FTL civilisation such as our own 21st century Earth or even less advanced.

1h.Ability to define ship design theory for each race

Examples:

- Race 1 favors lasers and will never use torpedoes. - Race 2 will always have at least 2 shields on every ship. - Race 3 will always build ships of certain speed and manuevre.

1i.Race bias and casus belli modifiers This is on top of the biases.txt file which was implemented in the ROTS expansion. A casus belli type modifier for extreme occasions where there is a love or hate relationship between the races.

Casus Belli modifiers :- 0 = Neutral, no change to relations. Races can interact normally 1 = Love, + 100. Races are guaranteed to form a MDP. War may still be declared and dislike could still be forced. 2 = Hate, - 100. Races are unable to trade with one another/Trade sanctions in constant effect. Highly likely to war. Likely to bombard rather than invade. Concessions must be made to maintain the peace.

1k. Fix the Expanding Y/N flag.This flag doesn't do what you would expect:

Expanding ;Y/N

Sure, it stops the empire from using colonizers but it also enables the characteristics used by the ancient guardian race. Instead of this flag I propose to break it up into the functions that is now indirectly enabled by this toggle:

"Expanding Y/N" - Should only do what it is supposed to - prevent the empire from using colonizers and troops to acquire new planets. "Isolationists Y/N" - the race does not migrate to other empires worlds, but can still travel between their own worlds (currently the expanding flag disables all population transports. The transports are not even used to relocate populations) "Influence factor 0.5 - 2" - Reduces or increases the size of influence spheres "Pirates can copy designs Y/N" - Prevents pirates from copying and using this race designs

If a flag is still needed to enable other minor "behind the scenes" functions for the Ancient protectors, then it should be called "Ancient Protector Y/N". -Arcatus

2a. Moddable technology. Edit the names, images and properties of each tech. Below is a list of new tech properties that could be added to the game for us to assign to our new technologies:-

Tech that adds a bonus to a planets quality. This would be a 'station side' tech almost like terra-forming, but on a less grand scale. The planet quality should, however, be capped at around 60%.

2b. Ability to add/remove tech. Define their position in the tech tree. This includes new weapon types, shields, everything.

2c. Option to flag a tech as untradable and hard to obtain via espionage. Tech trading advances the research much more quickly than it should and it would be nice to be able to turn it off. These techs will be a closely guarded secret and will be very hard to steal using spies.

2d. Option to assign a tech to only one certain race. This would allow for races to have their very own unique tech tree. This could take the form of a table, tech.txt file. Each tech could be numbered along with the race number. A value of 0 would indicate the race cannot research that tech.

3. The Ship Scaling Issue

3. Ability to mod ship sizes. I would like to set each ship with a modifier, perhaps 3 settings, 1=small, 2=normal, 3=large. This would allow huge ships to be created for races such as the Galactic Empire or the Borg, when compared to other empires ships like the Tholians.

4. Ships - Changes to the way each race designs their ships

4. More ship types per ship role. This would activate the unused ship images MIL1A etc. What I would like to see happen though, is each new ship image can be activated once the empire reaches a certain tech level. This would create the illusion of an evolving race. It would allow the player to start a game with Captain Archer's Enterprise and then by the time they are ready to build 500 size ships, they can move on and build Captain Kirk's Enterprise.

4b. New Design Text file. The Design.txt file doesn't seem to work. Could we have the ability name each ship role with a small list of names. For example; Frigate = Lancer, Nebulon B. This would mean that when designing our new frigate, we can select from a drop down list either Lancer or Nebulon B. The designs of all races should be named from a master design.txt file. I have still to test the stablity of this with Legends, but the feature to select from a list is still pertinent.

4c. The ability to set each empires starting ship designs. This would allow the player to start playing with a preset design tailored for the race of his/her choice. The player could also change this file to suit their style of play.

This way, you can use one format with all the techs, but by either setting a Level (in case L1 or Laser 1) or Null not present in the tech tree. The Unique modifier would signify a tech that can only be researched by this empire or stolen via spy missions (if it is NULL for position in tree for this race). Also this would be even easier if it were done in an excel spreadsheet.

So that is one Master Tree with all tech available and not unique as the BaseTechTree.txt or .xml (if you use the excel) that would be the default as current. Then you could override it in the customization folder for only certain races or all races by simply making a Race0TechTree.txt, etc to define the tech trees. This combined with giving the player the ability to define new techs would give modders a lot of flexibility in making each race unique research wise.

5. Weapons

5a. Moddable weapons. This includes the weapon images. Different types of weapons such as Star Trek style beams, mass drivers etc.

I would like to have optional weapon modifiers.

For example:

Damage to Armor Damage to Shields Range Rate of Fire Size of component Maximum Velocity Acceleration Energy usage Overload (if energy is available the weapon can be set to do more damage)

5b. Ability to change weapons image size. The sizes of each weapon effect seems to be hard coded. Could there be some method of changing the sizes of the weapon effects so they don't appear so small?

6. Governments

6. Moddable types of government. I'd like to add more governments, change stats etc. Each race should have a list of the governments it can use. This means that the AI and the player are restricted to certain governments. This will prevent, for example, the Borg, from changing government to a republic. Or the Galactic Empire to a democracy.

9b. Modify the game fonts Allow the user to add new fonts to the game and set their size and style for each theme/mod.

9c. Galactopedia Character descriptions. The ability to add lists of characters and descriptions for them in the galactopedia. -Arkblade

10. Story - Ability to change the backstroy and add events

10a. Modifiable galactic history. The ability to edit the galactic history so we can create our own backstory.

10b. Ability to add event triggers.This could be anything from ruins to spaceports and ship graveyards as well as testing zones. Discovering these will trigger the next galactic history message.

10c. Modifiable ruin events. Basically additional events that occur when ruins are discovered. These events would not be randomly generated but could be included by the modder when creating new galactic history. For example:-

- A race that is only available in a game through a triggered event. This would be one of the standard races but would not be able to be independant and would show up similar to the 'sleeping race' when triggered. - Discovery of a new resource type (previously unavailable, not necessarily a rare resource). - Trigger a new race 'invading' the galaxy (large fleet moves in and attacks planets and colonizes planets).

10d. More Events. More event choices in case of characters and populations... for example you can gain traits, but not lose them in an event? Why not let a character die in a race event? I can create races that would get rid of old for new... there is a lot of space. -Nedrear

10e. More Event Slots.

11. Galaxy Map

11. Customizable galaxy map. I'd like to create custom maps for the game. This would probably be best done using the existing editor to make a map. Race's home systems would be the location for their starting positions.

Just an option on the main menu, 'Map Editor'. Upon entering the editor you could select to generate randomly. It would be most helpful to also have a search function so that we can avoid duplicate system/area names.

There would then be a 'load map' button on the new game galaxy settings.

11b. Strategic Icons. The map icons that denote military ships, construction ships etc. Make these modifiable for each race, thereby making raceA's military ships icon a different shape from race b.

12. Planets

12a. Moddable planet types. Ability to add and edit new planet types and their distribution/rarity.

A text file that allows the player to define any number of planets for special cases

- Planet name - System in which it will always appear - Resources that will always be found at the planet - Habitability and Quality can be hard-coded - Planet size hard coded - Ability to set a specific graphic to use with the planet IE: a pointer to 0001.png in the PlanetArt folder.

Let's say I want to create the planet Eden in the Paradise system, the most perfect paradise (Quality 100, Habitability 100) in the known galaxy. Eden is a huge terrestial planet (size 600) that everyone wants to live on when they discover it, not to mention 1 or more rare resources are located here, along with large quantities of gold, gems, etc. This is the planet everyone is fighting for control of. You might even make a graphic for it of a beautiful lush, paradise to be the jewel of the galaxy.

12b. The ability to add new planet images. Simply add new planet images with a new filename in increasing numerical order.

12c. Additional planet types. It might be nice to define a few new planet types.

Irregular: Think of Kessel from the Star Wars Universe. Can have an atmosphere, but multiple asteroid/meteor strikes have less it anything but perfectly round.

12d. Moddable Facilities. MinFacilities/MaxFacilities would be the minimum/maximum amount of facilities on a planet. MinFacilities/MaxFacilities would be an integer with an additional flag stating the min/max facilities per planet, system, player, or game. For example, a player can build a unique facility (like the Selay Mustering Base in BotF), but the first player to build this would be the only one built in the game (one per game). Maybe a spacedock facility could have a limit of building one per system. A planetary shield facility would have a limit of one per planet.

13. Space Anomolies

13. Region name list. Could we have a separate text file for naming regions like nebulae, corridors, gas clouds?

14. Sounds

14. Modifiable sound folder. This would be a folder in the customization folder to change the effect sounds for the theme. It would simply replace the sound files in the Distant Worlds/Sounds/Effects folder. Default sounds would be used if the file is not found in the customization folder.

15. Main Menu Changes

15a. Save file for other empires list.

It would be useful to have a save file for the list of other empires screen so that we can load a specific list of empires including every field for each empire. We could then include this file with our mods.

15b. A Galaxy editor that doesn't require you to start a game first. Be able to create custom galaxies that you can load up with new games, rather than having to edit a savegame and load it up as a savegame. This would allow us to create a custom galaxy save file that can be loaded at the galaxy set up screen. Including such a file with our mods would greatly increase the realism of the mod.

15c. Menu graphics and UI. Ability to change the menu graphics and all the UI graphics such as build/research/diplomacy/trade screens.

16. Customization Structure

16a. Improved Customization folder. The customization folder should have the exact same structure as the Distant Worlds base folder. This would allow us to edit every file without replacing such as planets, weapon effects etc.

17. Colonies

17. Colony name txt file. Ability to make a colony name list so a player can build a list of names he/she wants to use for newly colonized planets. As a planet is colonized, the name is assigned from the list. A simple comma deliniated list, just like the ShipNames.txt would suffice.

IE:

Paradise, Utopia, Eden, Sanctuary, etc, etc, etc

18. Time

18. Changeable starting date. The possibility to change the date at which the game starts.

19. Characters

19a. Life expectancy. Dying is important. -Nedrear

19b. Character files Appearance order. If you use "?" instead of number. that character Appearance order is randomly change when each game started. -Arkblade

19c. Character Status. A character may become 'injured' or 'MIA' for a period of time. - Arkblade

19d. Random Portraits.Random characters can use random portraits. They can be defined by race and provided gender to the names and random portraits. -Arkblade

19e. Re-appearing Characters. Can define "reappear". When a character with this flag is removed from the game, he is put to last(or random) "Appearance order" and can reappear in the game later. (any number of times). -Arkblade

19f. Ability to Enter Random stats. Predefined and random. If you use "?" instead of number/text (appearance order, name, portraits, skill, trait), that value is randomly changed when each game started. (More precisely, each time when they appear in the game) -Arkblade

19g. Absolute leadership. A leader who doesn't lose the leadership position. For example the Borg Queen. Assassination and war can kill them. -Arkblade

Note: This list is not comprised solely of my ideas, the list used to be colour coded to denote which users made which suggestions. I removed the colour coded usernames from each article as it was all getting a bit untidy.

From Legends on-wards, I'll place a name in bold alongside each section.

Mass drivers would be awesome. I'd love to see high speed gattling cannons or long range sniper type high velocity weapons. I can finally see the need for some specialization with multiple weapon types (and countermeasures) aka multiple types of destroyers\cruisers.

Something else that I particularly would like, but I don't know if many would find it useful.

At the moment I've got my highly advanced evil races set to Aggression 114, which is quite aggressive. I won't put them higher because they would then have a chance to be pirates. These races are far too advanced and sophisticated to be pirates, perhaps an option in the race file to let the race be pirates, a 0 for no and a 1 for yes would suffice.

Also, I know Igard put editing governments in the list, this would be great, but at the very least we need a way to assign a special government type to a custom race. At the moment there is no way to let a custom race be Mercantile Guild, Hive Mind, Technocracy or Utopian Paradise, not even by using the in-game editor.

We should be able to modify EVERY VARIABLE that affects game play, in an easily accessible text file. The fewer the limits on what can and cannot be modified the better. Look to SE4 and SE5 for models on how this works to a game's advantage. In fact, I think SE5 allowed you to input complex formulae for weapons and other effects...

We should be able to modify EVERY VARIABLE that affects game play, in an easily accessible text file. The fewer the limits on what can and cannot be modified the better. Look to SE4 and SE5 for models on how this works to a game's advantage. In fact, I think SE5 allowed you to input complex formulae for weapons and other effects...

Hopefully, we'll reach that state one day. The potential DW has is staggering. It would be 4x Utopia!

Who knows? Let's wait and see...

WoodMan, I've added your suggestions to the list.

jalapen0, OK mass drivers are cool. For me it goes down as,'The more options available to the player, the better'.

8. Modable types of government. I'd like to add more governments, change stats etc. Any type of government could then be chosen by any race including special governments.

Just to clear things up, I didn't mean the player can choose any government for any race in game start up, I just meant that we should be able for example to make Hivemind an option for a custom race we add, like Borg for example. I think you understood me right first time, but just making sure

I think a list of government types for each race would be best. We can't have the Ferengi changing to hive mind half way through a game. It would also prevent races like the klingons or the galactic empire becoming democracies.

I am planning a total conversion mod, which I will move beyond pen and paper planning when it becomes apparent what I can expect to gain control over. I'm not entirely sure what I have control over now, but will create this list. A game like this can really trigger passions, and it has led me to really want to gain more control over the living aspect of the universe.

event modding (this is HUGELY important, I would like full control over what triggers events and the results of that trigger)

method of space travel modding (for instance, being able to mod in instantaneous travel via wormhole style gates, though only available for certain races)

full control over research, not just the properties of the tech, but how it is delivered to the player. Not sure what i have to work with here.

Espionage editing, even if it is in name only (same general types of missions, but renamed)

and some ability to control how certain empires behave (including, "never attack race X and Y" and "always have TOTAL WAR on races Z and K" and "never expand" and "voraciously expand"

The ability to reword basically everything on every window

The ability to manipulate how the economy functions

Implement victory conditions that depend on the race chosen by the player.

The ability to selectivily "turn off" multiracial colonization. Treat population as freebie superweak and invisible combat units, such that a few batallions of ground forces would simply slowly exterminate them, rather than gaining control over the planet directly.

This is of course a wishlist, I'll go through my writeup at home to see what if anything I missed.

Can't believe I forgot creatures. This is very important. Added to the list.

quote:

Espionage editing, even if it is in name only (same general types of missions, but renamed)

What's your vision of this, thiosk? I think the espionage could get 'beefed' up a bit, but I'm not sure what could be done on the modding side.

quote:

and some ability to control how certain empires behave (including, "never attack race X and Y" and "always have TOTAL WAR on races Z and K" and "never expand" and "voraciously expand"

You can already do this with race bias adjustment in the game editor. However, to stop them from ever attacking or to make them always attack would be cool. Expansionist and non-expansion is a good idea too. Added to the list.

quote:

Implement victory conditions that depend on the race chosen by the player.

Good, so if you play as the United Federation of Planets, you cannot win by war or subjugation, you have to win by diplomacy. Sand-box should always be an option though. Added to the list.

quote:

The ability to selectivily "turn off" multiracial colonization. Treat population as freebie superweak and invisible combat units, such that a few batallions of ground forces would simply slowly exterminate them, rather than gaining control over the planet directly.

That's cold, man. Certain races would definately do this though, Klingons, Romulans etc. I'm thinking of the Borg assimilating the populace. Adding to the list.

I think a list of government types for each race would be best. We can't have the Ferengi changing to hive mind half way through a game. It would also prevent races like the klingons or the galactic empire becoming democracies.

Well...depends how it's written. Presumably there are some variables that go into the AI's behaviour, or perhaps the AIs assume different behavioural states depending on game events etc. In which case I'd want to be able to modify the variables that define those different states, and add new ones and new trigger events for them.

Aren't there any SE4 and SE5 modders out there that could chime in on how those games did it?

** Additional species definitions: That is more stats to help define how a species behaves that is modifiable. I would add the following:

- Offence: The species offensive strength. Affects the species ground troop strength as well as ship design (high offence means ships get more guns, higher speed, less shields). - Defence: Species Defensive strength. Affects ground troops and ship design (more shields and manuevre). - Cunning: Modifies Spies and ships will gain additional electronics. - Toughness: Ground troop modifier. Tougher they are, the higher their firepower. - Subtly: bonus modifier for spies and diplomacy. - Xenophobia: Modifies diplomacy, also higher Xenophobia increases the chances that the species will start wars, or be willing to bombard planets. (This would be a good stat for Boskara or Sluken for example).

Also an economy switch that gives the following options (as a 0, 1, 2 or 3)

Addendum: Tax rates still affect happiness and growth. This will NOT bypass those modifiers.

I'll have more later.

The main reason for these modifiers is to help better define a species that doesn't fit the current mold. Say I want big, tough, stupid space ogres that make great shock troops for another empire, but left to their own devices would be quite content to bash each other over the head with a dinosaur bone. If you make the species 'Extremely Stupid (INT:50) then by default the troops are terribly week. With the Offence, defense and toughness modifiers, you can have them be big, stupid, but extremely destructive as ground troops. Sure they rush you with clubs and spears, but think of them as the Incredible Hulk...they are going to do some damage.

Monsters of many types, many abilities, many different images. Monsters in which players must research components (that are required) to defeat some of them (such as gasseous or phased monsters). Monsters that take over colonists (symbiots, parasites). Monster races like replicators/borg that have the ability to take over players ships in combat. Alien monsters that enter from off-map and travel star-to star doing their worst like the doomsday machine in star trek and the andromedans in MOO2. Monsters that move in on colonies with certain resources, eat them, and then "spawn" getting out of control unless the player does something about it. "Intelligent" monsters that can be dealt with diplomatically (i.e. player can pay them to attack some other AI race). "virus" and "bacterial" type monsters that randomly spring up and cause colonial plagues unless the player researches cures. A "religous" type monster (Leviathan or The Beast) that can convert colonies to the religion (causes colony to revolt) unless research is done in some appropriate field/technology to counter or provide resistance. "Genetics" type research ability that gives the player the ability to create monsters and unleash them on opponents (or perhaps themselves indirectly like Frankenstein). "Plant" or "fungus" type monsters that cause decrease in colony's population annually unless research is made and biological improvement facilities are built there.

Also, entities that travel across the map but aren't necessarily mosters: things that can collide with planets/moons (such as comets/meteores/asteroids) even moons that have been knocked from orbit (Space 1999). Even better, some of them have resources that could be mined. (i.e. these can actually move across the map like ships but in a straight line, or perhaps a very highly elliptical orbit that keeps in on the star map)

Thanks, Shark7. I put these under section 2c. Additional race stats. The economy switch is an interesting idea, it creates another aspect of each race.

rk, great suggestions. These are pretty severe modifications to the game, and I'm not sure if there are any modders on here that could implement these additions. I'll leave them off the list for now. In the mean-time, you should definately post this on the Master wishlist thread. You never know, Elliot may already be planning adding these features in a patch or expansion.

things that can collide with planets/moons (such as comets/meteores/asteroids) even moons that have been knocked from orbit (Space 1999).

.. those are some ideas off the top of my head.

1999, holy hamburger batman, I remember watching that back in the day..and battlestar galatica...bring on the fighters.

good ideas as long as the AI does not self-destruct..

There was this game Stars! came out around 1998 or so, it had mass slingshots as part of technology research. Players could build one on a planet in a system with asteroid fields and "slingshot" asteroids at other planets, pretty much annhialating the population of anything it hit if you didn't intercept it beforehand. A great 4x game, but the graphics were lacking. They were creating a Stars Supernova (part II) expansion some years ago that would've improved the graphics, unfortunately the funding fell through or something like that and it was cancelled (would've been a great game).

I can't announce the planned mod itself, as announced mods are usually the first to get scrapped. I intend to ask other modders for assistance with many of the things here, once we know exactly what will be available for modding, as I have too busy of a life to do it ALL myself.

Let me give you an idea of what I want to do with respect to my planned mod; give an idea of scope. I intend to turn DW into more of an adventure game with 4x elements than a true 4x game. The inclusion of events and storylines makes most of this possible, provided I am able to spawn in enemy ships and/or interstellar-capable monsters. This relies on the strict ability to both script the results of the story and events (like finding ruins or whatever) and their relative numbers. I would also LOVE to script bonus rewards for completing certain events or certain storyline things within outlined parameters.

Further, this mod requires a full overhaul of many of the economic and social aspects in game. Well, not so much an overhaul, but stripping out a lot of the things important to empire management, but not useful in the scope of the planned game. I have little- or no- use for diplomacy, and would seek to hardwire most interactions and restrict any communications between races to statements including "WE WILL TILE OUR PALACES WITH THE SKULLS OF YOUR CHILDREN" right before launching large-scale attacks. But thats because most factions of different race will be locked in total war throughout the game at all times.

Incidentally, I'd like to change how bombardment works-- you need a special, ultrarare resources to create a ship that can glass a planet's surface. Consuming this ship on use would be even better. Otherwise, you are stuck with invasion (though, as I mentioned in my previous post, I don't want multiracial planets).

Now, espionage in my envisioned game world requires some changes as well. I would like to turn most espionage inward-- the player fiefdom has little to no use for another race's technology. The main mechanic I am planning for espionage could be a bastardization of 'corruption' and I'm not entirely sure how it will get inserted. Corruption would grow as a function of planetary population, and grows faster on higher pop planets. Espionage would then be used to battle this corruption, for if it reaches a certain threshold, revolution could happen, taking that planet to an enemy faction. I would also want this revolution to result in the spawning of a whole ****load of enemy ships--IF the player has some ability to combat it via espionage. All that might be tough to understand, but imagine a ticker that adds 1% of this 'corruption' per month to a planet, and 2 spies workign full time would be taking chunks out of that ticker every few months, a whack-a-mole approach. An alternate way to doing this would be to make one enemy faction a 0-planet species, which has a single-minded approach to undermining your faction with espionage, its only way to get planets is to get yours to revolt.

The resource system should be quite effective in allowing me to overhaul certain game aspects, as long as I can add more or remove extras. How luxury goods interact wtih planets is something i'd like some control over-- mostly to weaken its impact on both development and happiness. One would simply have to mod the resource requirements for a certain ship component from "steel and aluminum" to "plasma cores" and "armor plate," and factories for those items would need to produce those items, which woudl then need to be shipped to the shipyards to build the craft. I intend to grossly slow down resource production in order to make having as many component factories (bastardized mining stations) hugely important.

I'm bastardizing research to make it about archeology rather than advancement. I would like to make research conditional on finding an artifact, at which time the research on it could begin. It would be REALLY great if the artifact (a unit of luxury good, perhaps) would have to be ensconsed in the research facility for them to research it, but that might be too much.

Lastly, I want to hard code all ships in the game, in order to model certain differences between races. Since research is functionally static, except for the bonus-giving-artifacts, ship designs can as a result be static as well. So I'd like to turn off AI control for the AI for ship design.

Very ambitious, very exciting idea, thiosk. I hope this becomes a reality. The possibilities are staggering.

Just think, we could ask lancer to write us an Emperor Fred story! How cool would that be?

I'm not sure where to put any of this on the list. If you want me to add any part of it to a section, let me know the segment of your post and the section number of the wishlist.

Obviously, the part about changing bombardment shouldn't be hard if we have access to all tech and resources. We would just remove all but one bombardment weapon and give it an extremely rare or high amount of a resource as requisite.

On slowing down research, one way of doing this could be to alter the labs output to almost zero or zero. Finding an artifact of a certain type (one which we have set to provide the sufficient amount of research) would then give us that tech. After removing all debris fields and random ruins, that would give us complete control over the tech available. The player would follow the story and gain new tech only as the story progresses. Having an artifact as an object in the game is a great idea, Of course this could just be created as a ship. If we had control over the amount of research it would yield and the stats of the ship (so that it's not viable to keep it) then this would have the effect. TBH, I'd prefer to see a small object in space that one of my freighters could go and pick up or 'tow'. That would be cool.

It wasn't meant to go on a list as much as provide some vision and some scope for folks who are designing moddability

I'm glad you find it compelling!

As for Emperor Fred, I'm hoping lancer just writes a damn book and screenplay ;)

Edit: you know, DW is really a great game, but I'd like to point out here the number one sticky point. DW is a living galaxy built off the master of orion mold. What I really want is a living galaxy built off the spore mold. True sandbox, endless variety, fight when you want to fight, expand when you want to expand, and exploit when you want to exploit.

I suppose WWII ranks as a bigger disappointment for Germany, Italy, and Japan

I'm sure this is not intended as a troll, but it looks a lot like a huge one... Watch your words ! The entire Europe suffered a lot under or near the nazi rule. Know that there is a sense of shame in Germany about this war, not in the form of a great defeat, but who they once gave the power to and what was done with it. I'm quite sure Italians are not proud who their country sided with at this time either (nor the leader they had), and I wouldn't be surprised that Japanese people regret it as well.

1. It would be nice to be able to write our own galactic history for themes and be able to over-ride the default galactic history.

- Writing the backstory - Triggered events that have race/galactic history information - Ability to write each race's history and have it in the galactopedia

2. Ability to mod our own 'ruins' events.

Examples: - A race that is only available in a game through a triggered event. This would be one of the standard races but would not be able to be independant and would show up similar to the 'sleeping race' when triggered. - Discovery of a new resource type - Trigger a new race 'invading' the galaxy (large fleet moves in and attacks planets and colonizes planets).

3. Ability to check/designate a race that can NEVER form its own independant colonies or be a starting colony race (my space Ogre example from earlier).

4. This is a PRIORITY for me: The ability to define new species types. IE Felinoid, Gas Bags, Silicoid, Etc...

- Some of these could have special habitability zones - Toggle to allow a species to colonize the gas giants (gas bags) at the expense of being able to colonies terrestial worlds - Ability to define special relationships in the species tables (IE Cat Girls hate Rat Boys, etc).

5. Ability to define ship design theory for my theme species

Examples:

- Race 1 favors lasers and will never use torpedoes. - Race 2 will always have at least 2 shields on every ship. - Race 3 will always build ships of certain speed and manuevre.